Looking for some distraction in gaming, MeinMMO editor Benedict Grothaus stumbled upon City Tales: Medieval Era. After just a few hours in the demo of the city-builder, he purchased the full version on Steam and immediately logged 10 hours of gameplay in the first few days… at the cost of sleep. It’s all due to a feature that construction games usually lack.
City-builders are often my retreat when I just want to game. They keep the mind alert through planning and organizing while having little pressure. Not for nothing is Against the Storm my absolute comfort game, even if it can be a bit more intense.
Now I have discovered City Tales: Medieval Era. The game has been available on Steam in its 1.0 release since January 29, 2026, and immediately reminded me of some games that captivated me in the past: Foundation, Banished, Manor Lords, or this creepy Anno with Cthulhu horror.
The game offers a free demo with about 2-3 hours of gameplay, not counting the freebuild mode. After I finished that, I couldn’t resist and bought City Tales for 22.99 euros (standard price).
Maybe that was a mistake, maybe it was the right decision, because I took the first opportunity to game into the early morning hours and only went to bed just before 6 AM. But the game is so enticing…
Building cities, but not alone
Basically, City Tales: Medieval Era consists of the same building blocks as most other city-building games:
- The settlement starts with a town center.
- Initial houses, lumberjacks, and gatherers provide basic supply.
- Slowly, the city grows, new resources are unlocked, production chains become longer.
- The citizens develop new needs to thrive.
The only difference from Anno and similar games is the “districts”: Like in Manor Lords, I draw the residential areas with borders, and my settlers then build them themselves. I only place supply and craft buildings when there is enough space available.
As a truly unique feature, City Tales offers companions that don’t just hang around advising me and babbling, but who actually perform tasks for me and bring a whole new dimension to the building game.
Companions like in an RPG, and they can even level up!
Companions are pretty much the core feature of City Tales. Each building needs a companion to function at all, meaning: If I build a lumberjack or a quarry, nothing happens there until I assign one of my companions to it.
If the person stays there long enough, the building becomes “autonomous” and can work independently. At the same time, my companion gains experience in the corresponding profession, which brings several advantages:
- The better they are in a profession, the greater the bonuses when the companion is assigned to a corresponding building.
- With higher levels in a skill, the companion can further upgrade the building and improve its production.
- Finally, I can assign companions as “headmen” in a hamlet, building a kind of outpost that the companion manages – and all buildings there then receive their bonuses.
By having to (or being able to) plan who works when, where, and how much, it changes my options for production and the game’s dynamics. I don’t have a linear flow of resources but can adjust through my companions to meet current needs. And each of them has their own story.
Just one more quest…
The entire game guides me through a story with quests. These are often simple tasks like: collect wood, paper, gold, or build this and that building. My advisor then tells me the story of how I, as the child of a ruler, govern the land and the difficulties involved.
Now, my companions also have such quests, and each of them reveals more about the respective companion’s journey, their personality, desires, dreams, and fears. I know something like this from games like Pathfinder and Baldur’s Gate, but not from a city-building game.
In the end, I found myself facing the “problem” of just wanting to finish one more quest. But this led to new building opportunities that I had to try out… which again led to new quests.
Sleep became uninteresting at some point.
City Tales breaks away from much that is just annoying in Anno and co.
The biggest advantage of the game is not the excellent companion system, but the removal of annoying and outdated features that always bother me in other city-building games.
In City Tales, I don’t need warehouses. Every resource and product can be stored in unlimited quantities, and I don’t need a building, suppliers, or collectors. Everything is global and always available, like in an RTS.
Additionally, I don’t even have to constantly have everything in stock. In other games, houses regress when they suddenly run out of beer or bread. City Tales eliminates such needs. I only need resources for building and upgrades, not for maintaining the status quo.
This way, City Tales takes a lot of pressure off a game that is meant to be relaxing, as I don’t have to constantly build new farms just because I want to slightly expand my city. Above all, the entire economy doesn’t suddenly collapse just because I overlooked that sausage is becoming a scarcity.
Is that realistic? No. Does it have to be? Not really, because here, realism is sacrificed for the sake of fun, and that’s exactly what games are for.
After about 12 hours, I completed the story for the first time and will probably start anew 2-3 times to play other maps and make different decisions (yes, those exist here too). The last game in the genre that captivated me like this was Fata Deum, which, despite some flaws in early access, is continuously improving: A new building game on Steam makes me a god and gives me what no game has achieved in 20 years
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